Started in 2011 as a therapy for my Dysthymia, this blog has taken so many twists and turns along the way! Current project is Perry Miniatures Desert Rats & Afrika Korps along with the Travel Battle set.

Thursday, 31 May 2012

Table shots with hex grid completed.

The journey so far.
It was only just a few months that I decided to get into 6mm scale Napoleonics and I have no regrets whatsoever. Everything has slowly come together nicely and the final piece of the jigsaw for me has been discovering Command & Colours. In deciding to dedicate myself to this set of rules I have needed to make a few changes to my terrain pieces including accepting the fact that the set will play much more smoothly and faster with a hex grid. A simple idea (thanks to Simon), of painting in only the points of the hexes has meant that my board retains the overall look of a standard miniatures game . I have also had to sacrifice my little landscaped village/town bases in order to represent BUA's within the hex grid, but oddly enough I find the freestanding buildings quite appealing now. I also had to break down the multiple tree bases so that individual trees could be stood in hexes to represent wooded areas. Finally I had to paint out the small black area on the corner rear of each figure base and repaint them for C&C (see pics). With all of this done I decided to set it all up on the board ready for my first game ..... at last!

I still have a couple of jobs to do:

I need to find a suitable method for making matching hill hexes. I have enough off-cut of the Citadel mat to make my hills. I tried polystyrene on a card hex base but I think the material is too thick to pin on the bottom. I'm going to next try thin wood, with the material stuck down on top only and the hexes then edged in flock/static grass, I think this may be better.

I need to finish off the set of Victory Banners.

I need to remake my river sections to fit the hexes, possibly re using my road sections with a new river texture added and new curved sections.

But at last I have everything I need for a game. With the long Queens Jubilee weekend coming up I hope to get started within the next few days.

I took a lot of pictures, it's funny how when you stand back slightly from the table the yellow dots seem to disappear, but looking directly down ( I was standing on a chair for the pics) the hex shapes are very clearly defined. Some pictures show the remarked bases, British Light infantry represent 5 'blocks' for example, Line infantry 4 blocks etc.

I'll probably take a break from the blog for a few days now, but any game moves will be recorded and photographed. Hope you enjoy the pictures, apologies for the slightly poor lighting. The shot of the infantry base on top of two buildings illustrates the method of occupying village/town hexes, no way round that I'm afraid. I will place two buildings of equal height in each hex.

All looks very good. I like your little markers with the flocked edges - it had occurred to me that another way of marking "missing blocks" is by allocating small cotton wool smoke puffs during a battle - I have used this system myself, and it doesn't look as daft as you might think!

Very nicely done. The polystyrene hills are interesting - could you just glue and flock them to match your mats? Also occurred to me that your hills don't actually have to be exactly hexagonal - as long as they fit the grid, and units can stand on them, they could be rounded - you could make a selection of 1, 2 and 3-hex sized hills (with dots, of course!) easier than mass producing the single hex hills. Might make a good visual blend with your minimalist hex grid too.

Congratulations on reaching the 'gaming' part of your project Lee! The set up looks great and I may have to steal your casualty markers myself. Well done mate, great work and I look forward to your first run down of the game......... Enjoy!

Going back to the English Civil War

This is the title of my other blog dedicated to painting armies of the ECW using Hinchiffe 25mm castings. I'm attempting to recreate the figures I owned over 30 years ago, the old range has been given a new lease of life by Ian Hinds of Hinds Figures Ltd and the figures are crisp and sharp just as I remember them.